1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to providing services for user equipment, and in particular, to providing location dependent services to user equipment adapted for communication via a communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A communication system is a facility that enables communication between two or more entities such as user terminal equipment and/or networks entities and other nodes associated with the communication system. The communication may include, for example, communication of voice, electronic mail (email), text messages, data, multimedia and so on. The communication system can be used for providing the users thereof with various types of services.
The communication may be provided via fixed line and/or wireless communication interfaces. A feature of the wireless communication systems is that they provide mobility for the users thereof. Examples of communication systems providing wireless communication include the public land mobile network (PLMN) and wireless data networks such as the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). Examples of the fixed line systems include the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and various fixed line data networks.
A communication system typically operates in accordance with a given standard or specification which sets out what the various elements of the system are permitted to do and how that should be achieved. For example, the standard or specification may define if the user, or user equipment is provided with a circuit switched service or a packet switched service or both. Communication protocols and/or parameters which shall be used for the connection are also typically defined. For example, the manner of how communication shall be implemented between the user equipment and the elements of the communication network is typically based on a predefined communication protocol. In other words, a specific set of “rules” on which the communication can be based on needs to be defined to enable the user equipment to communicate via the communication system.
Each communication system operates by running various different functions. The functions of various communication systems have been developed quite independently from each other. Thus it is possible that two communication systems such as two different communication networks handle a function in a different manner. For example, different and non-compatible protocols may be used for providing service in different communication systems.
An example of the wireless communication systems is a cellular or mobile communications system. The cellular communication system is a communication system that is based on use of radio access entities and/or wireless service areas. The access entities are often referred to as cells. A characteristic feature of the cellular systems is that they provide mobility for the users of the communication system. Hence they are often referred to as mobile communication systems. Examples of cellular communications systems include standards such as the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) or various GSM based systems (such as GPRS: General Packet Radio Service), AMPS (American Mobile Phone System), DAMPS (Digital AMPS), WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access), TDMA/CDMA (Time Division Multiple Access/Code Division Multiple Access) in UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), IMT 2000, i-Phone and so on.
In a cellular system, a base transceiver station (BTS) provides a wireless communication facility that serves mobile stations (MS) or similar wireless user equipment (UE) via an air or radio interface within the coverage area of the cell. As the approximate size and the shape of the cell is known, it is possible to associate the cell to a geographical area. The size and shape of the cells may vary from cell to cell. Several cells may also be grouped together to form a larger service area. A base station may provide more than one cell.
The cellular network apparatus and/or the mobile station can be employed for providing location information of the mobile station and thus the user. The location information can be utilized to provide of other services for the mobile users. Such location-based services are seen as one important trend in the future provision of service.
In an application the cells or similar geographically limited service areas and associated controller nodes facilitate the cellular communications system to produce at least a rough location information estimate concerning the current geographical location of a particular mobile station. If the location of the cell is known, it is possible for the system to conclude based on this information the geographical area in which a given mobile station communicating in said cell is likely to be at a given moment. This information may be provided also when the mobile station is located within the coverage area of a visited or “foreign” network. The visited network may be capable of transmitting location information of the mobile station back to the home network, e.g. to support location services or for the purposes of call routing and charging.
A mobile station itself may also be provided with appropriate equipment to provide information on which the positioning of the mobile station can be based on. The mobile station may communicate the information via the base to an appropriate network element that may use the information in a predefined manner.
More accurate location information may be obtained based on various location estimation methods, e.g. based range difference (RD) measurements or by means of an external location information service, for example, a satellite based system such as those referenced by the names ‘Global Positioning System’ (GPS) or ‘Galileo’. The measurements may be accomplished at the mobile station or by a number of base stations.
In the context of providing location information regarding a mobile user subscribing to a mobile communication network, the location information has been provided by means of a location service functionality associated with the mobile communication network. The location service functionality may be provided by a network element (e.g. a location server) of the mobile communication network. The network element then receives location information from one or more sources in the mobile communication network. If the service entity receives only an indication of the present cell (e.g. the cell ID), and no further computations and/or approximations are made, this would give the location to an accuracy of one cell, as it would indicate that the mobile user equipment is (or at least was) within the coverage area of a certain cell.
Systems and services allowing tailoring of a provided service based on the user's location are already known. In intelligent network (IN) based solutions certain IN functionalities, such as call forwarding or call barring, can be triggered based on information concerning the location of a specific user. Another example is present in the GSM systems, wherein local SMS messages can be provided, e.g., for advertisement purposes, upon entering a particular area. The triggering can be based on user's subscription to certain services and his/her current location.
More dynamic applications such as tracking of a mobile user can also be implemented. These can be used, for example, for providing traffic information while the user is driving a car. As a regulatory required service, location-dependent emergency number (e.g. 911 in the USA) calls apply user's location information, too.
A common feature to these solutions is that they are bound to certain operators or systems, and rely on dedicated network functionality, such as Intelligent Network (IN) signaling or the cellId information in the GSM.
It is becoming more important to be able to provide the services seamlessly such that the service provided may cross access network, operator, vendor, and even terminal boundaries. Due to the increasing importance of providing seamless service, which may also be referenced to by the term ‘multidimensional heterogeneity’, the existing network- and system-bound solution will not suffice for these new requirements.
The location services may be used to incorporate important information about the current context of a user, namely his or her current location, in the provided information. Apart from taking into account the user's location, the inventor has found that it might be desirable to be able to consider information that is associated with certain actions such as call screening or content providing or other services that are based on available network resources when offering location-based services. For example, it might be advantageous if the availability of certain localized streaming content (e.g., an advertisement video) and appropriate transcoding functionality in the network at a certain location could be used as a trigger for a mobile user to initiate a streaming application at said location with the help of the transcoder. The transcoder may be required since the access may take place in a location wherein only a bandwidth-constrained technology is available.
Conventionally, subscriptions for location based services need to be made through specific systems, such as by means of IN or using the SMS facility of the GSM. The specific systems may be such that they cannot interoperate. Thus the triggered actions are usually restricted to certain functionality, e.g., call control in IN based systems or SMS notifications in the GSM.
One proposal has been an alerting mechanism that is provided in access routers as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/295,626, wherein the Inventor of the present invention is a co-inventor. In this arrangement, the user equipment subscribes to certain attributes and receives a notification if the current access router or any other geographically adjacent router supports the required attribute. However, this method relies on the availability of such data in each access router. This requires a mechanism known as a capability exchange among the access routers in order to enable the shared data access. This may not always be appropriate. The proposed arrangement may also result in substantial signaling load on the signaling channels between the access routers.